This invention relates to antipilferage systems and to devices for use therein.
Antipilferage tags or markers are applied to articles of commerce in order to protect them from theft at the point of sale premises. Typically, the tag is a magnetic medium is deactivated when a shop assistant carries out the routine procedure at the time of effecting a sale. Such deactivation prevents detection of the magnetic tag when it (and the article to which it is attached) pass through a detection system, typically in the form of a walk-through framework which emits an alternating magnetic interrogation field. This field is designed to interact with a tag and to respond by, for example, emitting a warning signal in the event that detection of a non-deactivated tag occurs.
A problem which occurs frequently with conventional antipilferage systems is that an adequate detection signal is only available if a non-deactivated tag passes through the interrogation gate in the correct orientation. Normal interrogating gates contain coils which generate a magnetic field principally along the axis of the coil. The magnetic tags are also usually unidirectionally sensitive. Thus generally, the major axis of the tag needs to be aligned perpendicularly with respect to plane of the coils (i.e. along the coil axis) which produce the interrogating field if the tag is to be detected. Consequently, it is by no means unusual for the antipilferage system to fail to detect certain items which are removed from the store without first having gone through the proper sales procedure simply because of the orientation of the tag on the article as it is moved through the interrogating field.